This country brief is part of an eleven-part series exploring the landscape of B2C e-commerce marketplaces in various East Asian economies. This series offers in-depth insights into the traffic trends for active e-commerce websites, national established and emerging key players, main characteristics of the marketplaces, ease of online selling, the degree of specialization in terms of products as well as the products characteristics.

For more project information visit https://www.unescap.org/projects/b2c

Indonesia shows a moderate internet penetration rate (66%) and a large proportion of its population purchases goods online (65%). Nevertheless, the density of B2C marketplaces is particularly low with a total of 155 e-commerce websites for a population of 275.5 million (27.2% of the total traffic in the region studied).

Over the period 2019-2022, traffic on the 155 B2C marketplaces has grown significantly, apart from a slight decrease in 2020, from 5.2 to 6.1 billion visits. Among them, online shopping malls account for the largest proportion of marketplaces (47.1%) and capture almost the entire traffic (93.8%). The e-commerce market is dominated by domestic companies (32%), but closely followed by the United States (26%), Singapore and China (6% each). Of the total 155 B2C marketplaces, there is an important geographical diversity given the 22 other countries with companies holding B2C marketplaces.

The e-commerce market is highly concentrated with the Top 10 websites capturing 92.9% of total traffic. This Top 10 is led by online shopping malls, 6 in total, of which two Singaporean companies (Shopee and Lazada) account for 46.7% of the total traffic. Six other marketplaces are held by domestic companies driving 44% of the total traffic.

Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, only 42% of them allow foreign sellers to operate and 55% offer open registration to online sellers. Only half of these marketplaces are fully transactional (50%) and, as a corollary, 49% require trading fees to sell online.

Indonesia has a balanced proportion of generic (55%) and specialized B2C marketplaces (45%). Among the 70 specialized marketplaces, 32% specialize in automotive parts, and 29% specialize in fashion, and accessories. But the traffic dynamics also show that consumer preferences lean towards purchasing baby products (50% of the total traffic).